The bad hand

The “Bad Hand” We Carry — And What Sana Taught Me About Compassion There’s a phrase I find myself returning to over and over again: “I was dealt a bad hand.” Losing my daughter was, without question, the worst hand life could ever deal me. It is the kind of loss that rearranges your very being — the kind that pulls the ground out from beneath you and forces you to rebuild every breath, every step, every day. But over time, I’ve begun to wonder: Doesn’t everyone get a bad hand at some point? Not the same one — never the same one — but some version of it. A heartbreak, an illness, a betrayal, a struggle hidden behind polite smiles. In a strange way, acknowledging that everyone carries something heavy can feel validating. It reminds me that the world is not divided into the lucky and the unlucky, but into human beings quietly navigating their own storms. And yet, a part of me — the part broken open by grief — sometimes whispers, “But have they lost a child?” Because when your world is shattered in that way, it’s hard to imagine any pain that compares. It feels almost impossible not to measure your suffering against someone else’s. Not out of arrogance, but out of desperation — as if ranking pain might help you understand your own. But is it fair to compare? Is it helpful? Or is it simply a way to justify the enormity of the grief that lives inside me? What I have come to believe is this: Everyone’s hardest challenge is the hardest for them. Pain is not universal in shape or size, but it is universal in impact. What overwhelms one person may seem small to another, but to that person, it is everything. There is no scale, no competitive theory to measure suffering. No hierarchy of heartbreak. Sana understood this better than anyone I’ve ever known. No matter what she was going through — and she carried more than most realized — she made room inside her heart for the struggles of others. She treated people’s challenges with seriousness, with empathy, with a kind of sacred respect. She didn’t diminish anyone’s pain, even when she was drowning in her own. She didn’t compare. She didn’t judge. She simply cared. It made her unique. It made her extraordinary. In a world where many people are absorbed in their own battles — because it is true, we tend to focus on our own storms — Sana looked outward. She saw people. She felt their hurt as if it were her own. She reached out even when she herself needed saving. I think about that often. The “bad hand” I was dealt — losing her — has forced me to look at grief through a lens she unknowingly taught me. Not as something to compare or weigh, but as something to honor in myself and recognize in others. Grief is not a competition. It is a landscape we all walk, each on our own path, with our own shadows. And yet, Sana’s compassion is the reminder I carry: Even in pain, we can look beyond ourselves. Even in heartbreak, we can choose empathy. Even with the worst hand, we can still offer kindness. Maybe that is how we survive. Maybe that is how we honor the ones we lose. By becoming a little more like them.